The Victorian Government’s well-intentioned plan to allow free camping for all 131 Parks Victoria campgrounds this summer was haunted by the spectre of ‘ghost camping’ right from the very start.
There were plenty of voices warning that, with no financial incentive to cancel at a booked campsite, many people simply wouldn’t show up at their site.
And that, it seems, is exactly what has happened.
While bookings are apparently up, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of actual arrivals are down.
Professor Nitika Garg, a consumer behaviour expert at the University of NSW, told The Age newspaper that the government ‘should have seen it coming’.
Some sites have more ghosts than actual campers! IMAGE: Cizza
“When the booking is made free, there’s no downside to making it and not keeping it,” she said. “Essentially, your intentions can be vague but because there’s zero cost, it doesn’t hurt to act on them and assume that you would be able to go ahead with the behaviour at a later date.”
At Victoria’s most popular camping spot, Wilsons Promontory, the Age says the usually jam-packed Tidal River campground had witnessed dozens of no shows.
The newspaper quotes Wilsons Prom regular Paul Lindeman estimating that between 10% and 20% of campsites have been left vacant over the usually hectic New Year period.
“It’s disappointing when I know a lot of family and friends who missed out on getting a site,” he told The Age.
Campers Mark and Naomi Greenwood, said they had a similar experience when they camped at Bear Gully Campground on the shores of Warratah Bay.
“I went on the Parks Vic website at 10.05am back in October, the day the bookings opened and got the last site available at Bear Gully,” Naomi told the Age.
However, she said when they arrived this last week they found there were a lot of empty sites, despite the fact that the website said it was still full.
“We looked it up to see if we could stay for another night but there was nothing available,” she said. “By rights, the camping ground should be full again this coming week, but as you can see, there are still a lot of sites empty.”
However, Parks Victoria’s acting executive director of visitor experience, Jenny Hunter, insists that the free camping program has been a success. She told the Age that the organisation had ‘introduced a range of new measures to encourage people to cancel their booking if they decide not to go camping’.
Back in October, Mark Knower, Parks Victoria Senior Manager Marketing and Customer Experience, told the Grey Nomads that a more flexible cancellation and refund policy should improve the ‘ghost camping’ situation.
“Improving our booking system is an ongoing process and we will continue to listen and gather community feedback,” he said.
After seeking its own community input, Queensland’s Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (DESI) went even further.
“It is now an offence to not attend a booked campsite or to put up tents and leave them unattended for more than 24 hours without a reasonable excuse, such as in an emergency,” a DESI spokesperson said. “This regulation means people booking campsites and setting up equipment to exclude other campers will now run the risk of being fined and having their camping permits cancelled.”
In New South Wales, the NPWS has also acted to reduce the number of booked, unused campsites by making cancellation easier, and campers can get a 50% refund of camping fees up to the day of arrival, or postpone their booking and retain all money paid.
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Has been happening for a few years in qld have tried to book sites but all full have gone there found lots I f empty sites and moved in then went to rangers and told them payed the fee and stayed i liked the days when that was how it worked
If Parks Victoria management say that the free camping scheme has been a success then I believe them.
They are the ones at the coal face, not some city newspaper reporter.
Parks Victoria is a joke! The mismanagement of the Victorian free camping scheme has resulted in less Victorians being able to enjoy the limited camp sites that are available. I have photos of vacant camp sites and screen shots of the official website showing that they were booked and unavailable!
Parks Victoria do a great job on their limited budget.
They can’t monitor every single campsite.
A few empty campsites aren’t a major problem.
Find somewhere else to camp.
Its a big State with plenty of places to enjoy camping.
I’d be interested to understand how Parks measures “success”.
It’s more likely that it was an unmitigated disaster. A stupid idea.
Why bother at all. Boom gate at the entrance, swipe card acess, boom gate operates on a one in one out system. Portable roadside electronic signs strategically placed informing of vacancies. Too much over thinking of what used to be simple process of first in etc. Another example of our national parks being all about administration and not recreation: and Parks Vic are pretty good at the administrative side of things.
Nothing will improve while the cost for booking these site remains at a paltry amount, a system needs to be developed where a confirmation of arriving on site is can be registered. If this could be achieved then when booking a site you paid the booking fee of $6 ( NSW I think charge this ) and then a deposit of say $50 – $100 could be charged and held in reserve until such time as the arrival is confirmed or cancelled within a specified time frame, then credited back to the person who booked the site. Hence no show you loose your deposit ( hit them where it hurts in their back pocket ). While this may not be a perfect solution or easy to set up I’am sure there will be an answer out there somewhere.
Excellent idea.
We have camped at Tidal River for years and even when the camping fees were quite expensive we noticed a high no-show rate especially when the weather turned ugly. This happened even when it was fully booked. Not sure that a monetary penalty is always a deterrent but maybe a name or rego blacklist might help if it covered all Nat parks.
Good idea Bill D although $50-100 is a bit steep, maybe $20? Another thought, since one has to use a website to make a site booking surely some computer whizz could also create some software that can immediately scan the details of the person making a site booking to determine if they have multiple bookings on any given day and either refuse the new request or cancel all other bookings that clash with the most current one on the same day. Maybe cancel all of their bookings to get the message through to them?
If Parks are offering free camping then it should be ‘if the site is vacant at 4pm it’s available to anyone’ regardless of whether there is a booking…everyone knows exactly where they stand…
All bases covered
The only problem with that idea is that in peak time Tidal River bookings are weekly starting on a Friday. A person working until 5pm won’t be arriving to set up until at least 7pm or even the next day.
Easy solution to that is if it’s week long bookings only, the cut off is 4pm the next day… you can’t reserve the spot and not use it…
Good idea
WA has a full refund policy if cancelled 24 hours prior to attending. Helps a bit.
I reckon they should email you 5 days before to see if your still coming and if you dont respond the site becomes vacant for someone else to book.Victoria area.
Parks Victoria Sent out a user survey last year, the results of which I’ve never seen, but I’m fairly sure this was not the idea consumers would have suggested to improve things.
It’s a disaster if an idea and any one could see it was done to fail!
Emu Bight campground at The Lakes National Park was 75% empty the ANZAC long weekend. We tried to extend our stay and could not due to it being fully booked. Most campers we saw were only there for one night. Only 3 sites out of 20 had people stay longer than one night only. Most campers were in camper vans.